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I love a command line. It's numerous advantages over GUI is hard to list, but there are situations, where you need a remote X Windows connection. I've been asked many times by my colleagues, how to set up remote X Windows (X11, as the most recent version of X Windows is 11) on AIX, why it doesn't work, etc. Basic overview of X11 Windows architecture X11 is a client / server architecture. You need to know two things:
an application e.g. xclock is an X11 client the application's content is displayed by an X11 server Anyway, some... [More]

Recently I discovered a new switch to lspv command -u . It seems to be available since AIX7 TL1 and AIX6 TL7. Thanks for this switch IBM; I like it very much. A physical volume (hdisk) to an LPAR can be provided in several ways: without VIOS
local physical disk connected to a physical disk SCSI/SAS controller owned by the LPAR SAN disk connected to a physical FC controller with VIOS
SAN disk connected to a virtual FC controller a physical disk mapped through a virtual scsi SAN disk mapped through a virtual scsi logical volume on VIOS... [More]

For volume groups mirrored between two Virtual I/O server, it is desired to refresh the mirroring after an outage of a Virtual I/O server as soon as possible. No rocket science. Sometimes varyonvg is enough, sometimes it's not, I'm not sure what the culprit is. Script below walks through all active volume groups and searches for disks in a state other than active (missing or removed) and every disk in the missing state puts first into removed state and then activates it. In rootvg, there is usually a dump device or two. You need to disconnect... [More]

This entry is a reference to my AIX client LDAP authentication and authorization setup. I do not tend to explain the topic, rather to show you, how it worked for me. Tested on AIX 7.1 TL1 SP5 against TDS v6. For comprehensive and more in depth informations see: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aix-active_directory_integration/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-ldapconfg/ http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247165.html Installation installp -d /dev/cd0 -gaXY idsldap.clt32bit62.rte idsldap.clt64bit62.rte \
... [More]

To install dozens of LPARs using NIM, there is one thing you have to do for each one: manually choose the network boot device. An easy way to get around is to create a special LPAR profile for the installation with the only one network interface for booting and add the other ones after the installation. But there is also one beautiful HMC command: lpar_netboot . This article shows, how to use the lpar_netboot command on an AIX LPAR called testaix with two or more network devices. One of the network adapter is connected to a management network... [More]

Some products apparently have to install dozens of thousands of files to look mature. If you install them on localy attached disks, installation and possibly deinstallation takes very long time. There is a way to speed it up significanly. A little mental exercise: How many IO operations are necessary to create a file in a directory? Let's count: a beginning of a transaction is written into filesystem's journal log create an inode for the file link the file inode with the directory inode update the upper directory's inode... [More]

NIM is just great. Having one installation repository instead of locally distributed installation packages lost somewhere in /tmp is exactly what I expect from a "manager". It works perfectly for lpp bundled products e.g. AIX, PowerHA, GPFS, etc. But what about other products like DB2, many tivoli products e.g. Tivoli Directory Server, WebSphere, dscli? It is doable. What I want
To have an lpp_source object with WAS Be able to access the lpp_source from a client Let a WAS guy install WAS without making any mess (copying something to install... [More]

Collecting nmon outputs is essential for later analysis in case of e.g. performance issues. Usually data is collected on a daily basis. It's easy to run nmon from the cron at midnight for 24 hours, but if your server reboots, you have to calculate, how long the nmon has to run until midnight. Here I miss a command switch that would tell nmon to run until midnight... My nmon data collection setup is as follows:
Create a separate filesystem for nmon data files Schedule nmon in cron Put nmon into inittab Compress old nmon files, remove very old... [More]

Sometimes you need to merge two NIM lpp sources. For example you have an installable lpp source aix_710101_I , which in my NIM object naming convention is AIX 7.1 TL01 SP01. Then you download SP5 from Fix Central and create a (non installable) lpp source aix_710105_U . Next time you'll install AIX, you'll probably want to install AIX 7.1 TL01 SP5. You can of course install SP1 and then update to SP5, or create an installable lpp source of SP5. Or my favourite way - have a Golden Image AIX mksysb with SP5, but that's another topic. To create an... [More]

Story During a consolidation project, customer asked me: could you migrate three email servers from Linux to AIX and make the solution HA/DR? Definitely yes, challenge accepted. The former implementation of an email servers infrastructure was chrooted qmail on x86 Linux, but the solution was lacking some essential enterprise attributes like high availability, manageability etc. It has been built up somehow and it worked somehow. To migrate the status quo with no pain, the key decision was to keep the Qmail. The preferred target OS was AIX 7.1... [More]

Recently I have been asked, if Apache can bind to port 80, while running under an unprivileged (non-root) account. Of course, any process can, using RBAC. HTTP Server Apache HTTP Server has a directive in its configuration file, under which user account the process should run. But if you want it to listen on the default port TCP/80, the parent process must be running under root. Apache opens port 80 as root and then forks child processes, that drop their effective uid and gid according to httpd.conf. There are some drawbacks: some people just... [More]